Miners’ disclosure needs improvement: CSA

A regulatory review of the technical disclosure provided by mining companies found that, while miners’ reporting was generally acceptable, there’s room for improvement in certain areas.

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) published a notice detailing the results of a review of mining companies’ disclosure of resource estimates, and provided guidance to issuers on the regulators’ approach to assessing such disclosure.

The review, which was carried out by regulators in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Alberta in late 2018, examined disclosure from 86 companies. The CSA concluded that most was “satisfactory.”

However, the CSA found material disclosure deficiencies at 10 companies, which subsequently revised their reports. It declared that some aspects of technical disclosure need improvement.

In particular, the CSA said that companies need to provide more detail on the technical and economic assumptions underlying resource estimates; ensure that the data backing resource estimates is properly verified; and improve disclosure about the risks and uncertainties to specific mining projects.

The regulators noted that boilerplate risk disclosure and reports that don’t include project-specific risks could be misleading.

The CSA said it will “continue to pay special attention” to miners’ disclosure of resource estimates.

“Robust technical reports are essential to disclosure at key project development stages,” said Louis Morisset, chair of the CSA and president and CEO of the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF).

“Our intention for publishing this guidance in the current environment is to support mining issuers in preparing their resource estimates,” Morisset added, “and to reinforce the importance of technical reports that are transparent and comply with disclosure requirements and industry best practices.”

James Langton

James is a senior reporter for Advisor.ca and its sister publication, Investment Executive. He has been reporting on regulation, securities law, industry news and more since 1994.